The present invention relates to printers capable of performing color printing, and more particularly to a printer capable of performing color printing by means of a simple operation.
Conventionally, tape printers are known which produce a label by printing input character, symbol, and figure data on a tape-like printing medium and which cut the printed tape portion.
One conventional tape printer produces a label by setting a tape cartridge which contains a printing tape and an ink tape in the printer and transferring ink in the ink tape to the printing tape. Thus, the printing colors transferred to the label tape are limited to the color of the ink tape contained in the tape cartridge. Thus, the characters, character ornaments, etc., are all printed in the same color and hence the expression force can be insufficient.
Since a combination of colors of label and ink tapes is fixed for each tape cartridge, a tape cartridge is required to be prepared for each combination of colors of a label and characters to be printed on the label and to be replaced with another, if required. Thus, operation is complicated.
In order to solve such problems, the use of a printing tape cartridge which contains a multi-color printing ink tape could be considered. In this case, even when any one of monochromatic and color printing tape cartridges is set, it is desired to print characters, symbols, etc., appropriately.
It is not preferable to specify a print color when data, for example, on characters to be printed are input with a monochromatic printing tape cartridge having been set because only monochromatic printing can be performed on the tape of the cartridge.
In some cases, data having no color information input in a state where a monochromatic printing tape cartridge is set can be printed in a state where a color printing tape cartridge is set. In this case, there are two possible measures to be taken, one of which is displaying an error message and then stopping the printing, and the other of which is printing all the data in black.
When the printing is stopped, it is required to cause the user either to specify newly a print color or to exchange the set tape cartridge with a conventional one, which is troublesome for the user. The measure to taken to print all data in black nullifies the purpose of using a color printing tape cartridge and only produces the same result of printing as the conventional method.
It is desired that the tape printer should be small and lightweight so as to be easy to carry and inexpensive from a standpoint of its character. Thus, a portable tape printer is only capable of mounting thereon a display having a small display screen in which the number or quantity of data to be displayed is limited. Thus, even when the user tries to set print colors, using this small display screen, it is difficult for the user to finely set the colors of data to be printed and hence the color setting work is troublesome. Therefore, it is difficult to produce a label with an ideal combination of colors. As the case may be, characters and their background can be specified in the same color, which can lead to a failure in which a label on which characters can not be discriminated could be produced.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a printer capable of printing input data in appropriate colors even when no print color of the data is specified.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a printer capable of easily printing data in an expressive colorful manner.